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Your energy is your power. When your energy is gathered, like drops of water in a river, its power is amplified. You choose to give your energy to the people you love, the causes you support, the work that allows you to live. And at times you may find yourself feeling unfocused or drained.

Imbalances of energy exchange are energy leaks. They occur when you work or live with an energy vampire. When you are helping ground someone who is ungrounded. When you have been programmed to believe that your power is too much. When you chronically give more than you receive. When you are raised to not have permission to say no.

If you are dealing with someone who always wants more from you. They don’t know how to regenerate their own energy so they hook into the energy of others. At work this could be a manager that sets unreasonable deadlines, creates destabilizing drama or micro-managing busywork. At home this may be a family member who always has demands, is angry or interrupts what you are doing to make you focus on their agenda. They may play victim or use guilt to hook you and use your energy.

“Energy is the driving force for the universe… One form of energy can be transferred to another form.” Scientific Principles

This science is true for human energy as well as energy held in the earth elements. You have the opportunity to focus the transfer of your energy in a way that is fulfilling by shoring up your energy leaks. As you become conscious of how your energy is being used you can stop the leaks and create more balanced energy exchanges.

The most effective way to stop energy leaks is regularly practicing Active Meditation (more info). In this practice you visualize your energy field (aura), reset your chakras, create a new grounding cord and call your energy back to yourself (video example). Defining what is you and what is not you, energetically through this process, is key to dissolving the hooks from energy vampires too. When you own all of your energy, by being aware of how you are sharing it in the world, it is harder for people to take it from you without your agreement.

Your energy is your power. It took you a lifetime to develop how you share your energy, so be patient with the time it takes to break the habits that lead to energy leaks. Each energy leak you stop gives you more focus and fulfillment in your life.

Who taught you what boundaries were allowed or expected? It’s not a subject taught in kindergarten or elementary school. Boundaries are demonstrated socially. They are both subtle and exacting.

The greatest cause of suffering I see in sensitive people originated from a lack of clear boundaries.

Your parents may have told you “no,” punished, shamed or discouraged you from activities that made them feel uncomfortable, crossed their boundaries. They may have had no boundaries or a lot or rules about touch, words, privacy, food, allowed emotions, money, how to dress, nudity, topics of conversation, personal space, time, performance at school, in sports or work.

The rules you learned at home may not have worked at school or with your friends who had different boundaries.

You need healthy boundaries. When another person shows you their boundaries you know how to relate with them. They create a clear container for understanding your world.

When the adults around you growing up don’t have boundaries, don’t honor your boundaries or change the rules frequently, it creates a state of heightened alert. The good news is that you likely have stronger than average intuition. The bad news is you have it because you didn’t feel safe and had to intuitively read the world around you all the time, to navigate the shifting boundaries.

Intuitively tracking those around you all the time is exhausting and confusing. It’s exhausting because you don’t get to relax into a sense of safety. It’s confusing because often the energy or feelings you sense in those around you gets misinterpreted as your own experience. Keeping your psychic antenna open all the time blurs the boundaries.

For example, you work at an office and have a passive aggressive co-worker. You find yourself feeling angry a lot but can’t say why. When you leave work, the anger subsides. Because you are immersed in their energy with no boundaries it feels like your own anger. Reading the mood of those around you is a skill learned in order to camouflage and create a safe space in an environment with unpredictable boundaries.

As child in an environment of unclear or absent boundaries reading others to protect yourself and prevent harm is essential to survival. But to read someone this way is to get in their psychic space. Over time this survival skill creates suffering because you feel everything around you. So how do you learn to reset your psychic boundaries?

Resetting your boundaries so intuition can work for you rather then against you requires consciously owning your energy field on a regular basis. Practicing simple active meditation tools is what works for me. A series of visualizations that create healthy energy boundaries can be applied on a walk or in a conference room. In the simplest form, you notice your grounding cord, set your aura bubble, put up protection roses and call your energy back to yourself.

To feel more of you and less of those around you isn’t hard-hearted. You still have compassion and can even help others more when you aren’t matching their emotional state.

Meditation is a pathway to strong intuition and inner-peace. You don’t need to sit with your eyes closed to meditate. I’m an active person and need to move my body. Walking meditation is the way that I have been able to more consistently commit to meditation and insure I regularly set my energy to my truth. In this video I share with you the steps I take to clear out and reset my energy field with walking meditation.

The world has been pretty wacky lately. As much as I’d like to be able to give you a magic remedy to lift you up out of the mire, the truth is there is no such thing. But there are a couple tools that will help you claim your inner-peace.

One is to connect with the essence of your soul’s presence in your body. This can be done on a bike ride or on a yoga mat. There are no rules aside from breathing and being aware of the present moment. In order to let go of thoughts of the past or the future, let your awareness follow your breath. The more you do this the easier it is to return to your center and recognize the energy that isn’t yours but is affecting you. My next point!

Not everything you feel is your own. Knowing this helps you ride the waves rather than be pummeled in the surf, to stay sane in the midst of a wacky world. The second tool is to identify and clear other people’s energy out of your space. Let’s do that!

What you feel that is NOT generated from within has three primary sources:

Absorbing someone else’s emotions such as sadness, anger or fear

A direct energy whack, such as being blamed, shamed or punished

Group energy, collective beliefs or feelings

Absorbing emotions can happen through supporting someone you love or unconsciously healing someone you are physically around who is suffering.

An energetic whack, has two parts: your feelings generated from it and the energy sent at you by the person. Psychology says understand and heal your feelings but misses the second part.

For example, a client of mine is a teacher and one of her students needed to be sent out of class due to behavior that was preventing others from learning. The student’s parent went into a rage on the teacher rather than acknowledge that her child was out of line. She blamed her for shaming her son.

My client was completely thrown off. She questioned herself and how she handled the situation. She had followed normal protocol. The student had been given multiple opportunities to change his behavior. While her colleagues validated that she did no wrong, she couldn’t find peace. The energy whack from the parent was in her space. Until the energy that wasn’t hers was moved out, she felt “off.”

Group energy impacts can include world events, the community where you live, where you work, worship or socialize in-person or online. The news, politics, natural disasters, beliefs about wealth and poverty. These are compounded by the number of people feeling and radiating out discontent and fear. Collective energy gets into everyone’s space. Clear it out regularly!

Start with the breathing tool, then move into this simple visualization:

Imagine a bubble suspended in the air in front of your body

Intend that any energy that isn’t yours move out of your body into this bubble

It may or may not be attached to a specific person or experience. For example, move out all financial fear that is not yours. Ranging from the global economy to the specific fears of your spouse or parents.

When the bubble is full of all of the energy that is NOT you, watch it float to a faraway place in your mind’s eye and pop.

Then call your energy back to yourself from the sources you identified. See yourself being filled up with the energy of your own essence, like liquid gold flowing into the top of your head.

Hopefully it helps a little bit to know the influence of wacky global, cultural or social energy around you has a real impact. It’s not just you and you’re not alone. Use this awareness and these tools to claim your inner-peace.

When the sky goes dark, before the light of the moon starts to return again, new moon energy supports planting seeds for your dreams. What you focus on or envision at a new moon has more potency. This month the new moon falls on April 7th. Take time to consider with intention what dreams you would like to manifest in your life.

The exercise in my blog post last month set a strong foundation and prepared your creation space. Now you are ready to manifest your dreams. Remember: Foundation + Creation = Manifestation

Harness new moon energetic support and be intentional with your manifestation on the day of the new moon or day after. You may want to repeat the practices from last month’s blog post first or do them now if you haven’t yet.

Make a list of what you want to manifest in your life. With these intentions in mind, follow this simple mediation:

With your eyes closed, imagine that the base of your spine (root chakra) has an anchor connected to the center of the Earth. Just above this connection and below your belly button is your sacral chakra, it is where you hold creation energy. Say to your sacral chakra, out loud or in your thoughts, “thank you for everything you have helped me create and will help me create in my life.” Gratitude fuels positive creation.

Move up your body now to just above your belly button, this is your solar plexus chakra, where you hold your personal power, the “will” that gives you what is needed to manifest your creations in the world. Before you set your manifestation intention it helps to give your solar plexus a healing. It is your center of gravity, where you balance your body’s interaction with the world.

Over the course of life, you have had your energy whacked for showing your power. Whether it was at five years old by a controlling parent or recently by a co-worker uncomfortable with your attempt to manifest something new. These whacks leave scars. They change your response to the world and get in the way of feeling permission to use your power to manifest.

Imagine you have a paint brush in your hand that has been dipped in gold. The gold has healing power. Use that paint brush to touch each scar or open wound on your belly. As you touch them with the paint brush they heal.

When your healing is complete, visualize a rose directly out in front of you. This rose is your manifestation tool. You can imagine separate roses for each area where you have dreams to manifest such as financial ease, a relationship healing, a new home. Or you can use one rose for all of it. This is your life, so play with what works for you.

Remember the list of what you desire to manifest, drop words or images representing these dreams into the blossom of the rose. I like to be both specific and general, such as imagining a new home with a fireplace made of river rock, and add the feelings that I want to experience related to my home: peace, comfort, ease.

Fill the rose in your imagination up with the literal and feeling oriented values you hold for this manifestation. For example, if you ask for abundance, be specific that you want financial abundance/prosperity versus an abundance of bills. And include what you would like to feel as a result: I have enough, money comes ease, I have unlimited possibilities etc.

Once your manifestation rose is brilliantly shining with your dreams and desires, see a bubble around the rose blossom for protection. Then ask the Divine Mystery (God) to bless the manifestation. Imagine the stem of the rose being snipped to set it free and watch it float up into the sky to be manifest.

Keep your faith strong. Take any actions you need to support your intentions. When you ask clearly and set your energy to match the vibration of the manifestation, the universe is free to support you! Blessings to you, as you manifest a life that is better than you ever imagined!

The two critical energetic steps to manifesting a positive new experience are:

A Solid Foundation

Clear Creation Energy

Think of it this way: Foundation + Creation = Manifestation If the foundation isn’t in place or the creation energy is muddled your manifestations don’t last or aren’t as great as they could be.

A strong foundation means you are grounded so you are stable as the change shifts your center of gravity. When the good comes you want to be able to enjoy it. The root chakra at the base of your spine is your energetic foundation. It is where you hold the energies of survival, safety and security.

To establish or reinforce your foundation, follow this simple meditation:

Visualize your root chakra connected to the Earth by seeing a beam of light or tree trunk attached to the base of your spine extended down into the center of the Earth. Set your intentions that this new grounded foundation is “in present time” by thinking of today’s date. Claim that this foundation is only for you. You ground for YOU, no one else (unless you have young children, it is important to ground for them too).

With your solid foundation in place, move up in the energetic body to just below your belly button. This is your sacral chakra where you hold creation and sexual energies. Clear creation energy is free from past limitations and the influences of others in your life. It is important to clean out your creative energy space so you don’t repeat undesirable experiences.

To clean out your creation space imagine you are holding a helium balloon on a string. The balloon’s job is to collect up all the energies you are cleaning out of your sacral chakra. Imagine these energies move out of the area of your body just below your belly button, like a wisp or silver strand they move into the balloon filling it up.

Here are some energies you may want to move out of your creation space and into the balloon:

Possessiveness, someone’s energy keeping you to themselves or possessing you sexually

Depression, hopelessness, discouragement

Blame, shame, anger, jealousy

Attachment to the form the creation needs to take

Energy whacks/wounds from your past attempts to create or to your sexual energy

Unworthiness, the lie that you don’t deserve to manifest or can’t because of x y z…

Fear of success, resistance, suppression of your ability to have what you want

Other’s attention on your creation. It doesn’t matter if it’s curiosity, poor boundaries or mal intent, move it out, it is in your way.

Rigidity, feeling stuck, stagnancy

Now that you’ve cleaned ALL that unwanted energy out you may have a bouquet of balloons! Thank them for their assistance and let the strings go. Watch the balloons floating up into the sky, higher and higher until they disappear.

For extra credit, imagine filling your sacral chakra with energies you would like to experience in your creative space such as ease, inspiration, unlimited possibilities, sensuality or whatever you like.

With your solid foundation and vibrant creation space you are empowered for brilliant manifestation. I’ll dive into manifestation in my next blog post.

Life tests us when we least expect it. We can get metaphysical and see it as an opportunity for spiritual growth, yet tests challenge us. They feel uncomfortable, stressful, confusing and even painful, they may bring up our anger or disappointed. Tests are asking us, or forcing us, to change. It can be as subtle as a shift of our thought patterns or as explicit as how we live every day.

Our physical body, mind, emotions and soul are always unconsciously striving for a state of alignment with each other. An illness may cause our mind to struggle with our body’s lack of cooperation. The death of a loved one may cause our heart to question the body’s purpose as we are left behind while their soul has moved on.

In the midst of being tested, there is a temptation and a tendency to suppress discomfort. But our physical and emotional discomforts are indicators. They will guide us through life’s tests, if we listen. They bring awareness to our combined physical, mental and spiritual state of being.

To lessen the discomfort without just postponing it, we have to pause to listen to our intuition. The act of stilling the mind through meditation, tuning into our breath (body) and listening to our soul, may initially draw our attention to the discomfort. But with a bit of commitment to breathing through the edgy space, it will reduce our suffering.

When we listen to our inner-guidance it shows us what we need in order to walk through the fire of life’s test. It may tell us it is time to step away from a relationship or job. It may point out that it is time to commit to our health by changing the way we eat or to taking regular time for our creativity.

Meditation is deep listening. By listening we are consciously participating in alignment of our physical experience with our souls intention. This alone reduces stress regardless of life test we are experiencing.

The beauty is that we don’t have to stop living to listen. As Thich Nhat Hanh says we can invite inner-peace through consciously breathing in and out no matter where we are or what challenge we are facing. It is that simple.

In the morning I remember, by the afternoon I’ve forgotten, in the evening I remember again. How many times I can remember and forget the same spiritual lesson? It helps to have a good sense of humor about it. Spiritual lessons are generally simple yet profound. We “get it” in an Aha! moment of recognition and breathe a sigh of relief in the awareness. Suddenly we feel unstuck, clarity or an opening to new possibility.

When we learn a new spiritual lesson, it often feels like we are remembering something we’ve long forgotten because we are. We are tapping into a universal truth that puts our earthly interpretation of life experiences in a healthier perspective. But it is easy to forget what we know when we get pulled into the prevailing energies operating around us, from demands at work or home, to our own impatience or fears of what might happen.

A coworker at my technology job is spiraling into worry, fear, and what-if scenarios during a phone call and it tosses the rest of my day out of alignment. Instead of feeling proactive and peaceful as I go through my work day I feel off-center and behind. Not even aware of what hit me. A client calls with an “I need it now” demand and I forget to put it in perspective with the rest of my responsibilities. Only to find myself stressed out and behind trying to keep up with my prior commitments and complete the new request. I started the day out remembering and forgot. It takes a disruptive activity to remind me again such as a phone call from a friend or stepping outside to get lunch.

One of my spiritual lessons is “what is meant to be will be” or the Divine Plan is at work regardless of how it appears to me. It doesn’t mean I like it. I may feel sad, disappointed, disheartened or betrayed by God, confused, even angry. It is hardest to accept when what occurs feels like a loss. The unexpected death of a loved one, failure at something I’ve been working extremely diligently to accomplish, or struggling with something that seemed easy many times in the past. When we try every avenue only to have each lead to a dead-end, the Divine is sending us a message. Our path is elsewhere.

Another personal spiritual lesson that I frequently forget and remember is regarding manifesting what I desire. When I ask for something, if I can let go of how it arrives, (the timing and what form it takes) I’m more likely to notice when the prayer is answered. Demanding a certain form causes us to miss out on so many opportunities. It’s in a sense trying to control the choices of others and the Divine. When we set an intention with control energy, such as “please help my current job give me a more flexible schedule, better pay, a boss who I feel is a mentor,” we are failing to allow flexibility in how it arrives. The job that offers these things may not be our current job but a new job that is more aligned with the request. When that other job shows up, we ignore the offer because we are stuck wanting our current job to change and match our desire.

The primary energies I’ve noticed get in the way of remembering my spiritual truths when I need them most are the fears and expectations of others. Taking 10 minutes to get grounded and set my energy with a short meditation in the morning improves my odds of staying centered in the midst of all the energies that flow through my life in a day. Meditation tools can be applied liberally here to re-center after we get thrown off, but that’s presuming we remember when it happens!

Judgment is a form of control used to move someone onto our agenda. The silent or embedded message it carries says, “Your choice is not acceptable to me, so choose something different that I’m comfortable with.” Energetically, judgment is an attempt to control our power center, the area just above the bellybutton (3rd chakra). It knocks us off-center to give the judge the power position. Or it allows them to hook into our energy and redirect it to their agenda.

Noticing how we respond to the energy of control attempts from judgments, allows us to strengthen our power by neutralizing the energy rather than getting knocked off-center by it. Some common responses to judgment are self-inquiry, seeking approval, self-sabotage or over achievement.

Self-Inquiry – The natural first response to someone’s judgment is self-inquiry. Is it true? Depending on the relationship we have with the person, we may just assume it’s true. This can translate into thinking something is wrong with us. Alternately it may be an opportunity to self-reflect, look at a dark corner in ourselves and decide if we want to keep feeding that aspect. The key indicator here is what our body is telling us, do we feel out-of sorts; is our stomach a bit anxious? Our body is our intuitions first barometer.

Seeking Approval – The most powerful people in our lives are the ones we love, second only to those in authority positions. When we love someone it is natural to want their approval. Even when we are just getting to know a person, we are determining their response to us and would like to be seen favorably. Judgment comes from unconscious or conscious beliefs that require change of another’s behavior to in order for them to receive approval. On the spirit level, when we alter what we know to be our truth in order to seek the approval of another, we are depleting our energy, giving a piece of ourselves away. This is the energetic hook that can become a chronic vampire of our life-force if we continue to deny our truth in order to please others.

Self-Sabotage – Feeling judged can cause us to feel angry. This anger is intended to show us our boundaries have been violated. When we are act from the anger we respond one of two ways, self-sabotage or over compensation. We may consciously say, “they are wrong.” But unconsciously believe the judgment and use our anger to propel us to some self-sabotaging behavior that proves them right. This is an extreme example of judgment throwing us off-center.

Over Achievement – Alternately we may feel the need to prove the judge wrong by excelling our efforts toward success in the direction we’ve chosen. This can be a form of competition energy or rebellion against the control. We have to demonstrate that we didn’t deserve the judgment through our success.

When we let judgment be the issue of the person judging by staying in our center, we retain our power. We don’t let the outside energy influence us to think less of our self, seek approval, self-sabotage, over achieve or throw us out of balance. We continue to be our true self rather than react in one of the other ways.

Reaction to judgment can actually be a catalyst that generates new experiences that we learn from whether through success or failure. But if we change our course to respond to another’s judgment we are still changing course, which means we are on a less direct path to the life we want.

Being aware of the energy behind judgment and practicing mediation to stay in alignment with our truth, helps us strengthen our ability to remain centered in the face of judgment and control. Then we are able to use the emotions we feel in response to being judged such as anger or uncertainty to set healthy boundaries, heal aspects of our self and even catapult us in a direction of our choosing.

Life surrounds us with constant stimulation of our senses. We need to make time to rest our psychic space in order to hear our intuition clearly. One way we can do this is through what I call daylight dreaming, a restful psychic state on the edge between sleep and wake, not fully conscious yet not asleep.

In this place our spirit is processing its experience. It is coming to new awareness of the energies in our vibrational field that are ready to be released or resolved. This is a restful state that brings healing, awareness and a sense of rejuvenation.

The visions that occur in daylight dreaming are like a slideshow of snapshots from our experiences. They have emotions associated with them: friendship, love, anxiety, anger, shame, joy, confusion, grief. As the scene drifts through our consciousness the unresolved energies take center stage. Often bringing to mind details we didn’t grasp in the moment of the experience.

In reviewing them from this restful place, they effortlessly begin to dissolve. We feel deeper relaxation in our body. We are still awake but our soul is actively directing the mind.

To access our inner-guidance this way starts with taking time to rest. We can simply lay down and close our eyes, engage in shavasana yoga practice or meditation. We encourage this state of daylight dreaming by resting when we are not physically tired but feel mentally overwhelmed.

Mediation to stimulate daylight dreaming:

Lay down with your eyes closed, quiet your mind.

Notice the places in your body that are tense and feel them relaxing.

Effortlessly visualize all the energy of your day before this moment, moving the images out of your body and into a bubble. Send that bubble to a faraway mountain top and pop it.

Notice your emotions, how you feel. There will be a dominate feeling and many other less dominate feelings all happening at the same time. For an emotion that is negative or energy depleting, notice where you feel it strongest in your physical body.

With your mind relaxed let whatever image comes emerge from your memory, this image will connect your emotion, the place where it is holding in your body and the experience which initiated or triggered the emotion.

Then imagine that energy being drawn out of your body into another bubble and send it off to a faraway place to recycle its energy with neutrality.

This can be repeated with the next layer of strongest emotion that surfaces in your daylight dream.

Daylight dreaming facilitates healing, a relaxation of the mind and release of spiritual energy in our aura field that isn’t serving us. Allowing ourselves to fulfill this essential need to rest the body and mind, restores us to a place of greater strength. Rest reduces stress and cultivates inner-peace. Resolving, releasing and healing our experiences bring greater clarity to our intuition.

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